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Friday, October 15, 2010

Nature Pavilion Review & Giveaway

A shop specializing in Nature and Science. You can't go wrong there. Children are always asking science questions, it is indeed the most interesting subject. I contacted Nature Pavilion and I knew that what they would send would be great. They decided to send us the Butterfly Bungalow. It is great. We got it and it also came along with a coupon to get 3 larvae in the mail.

Here is the Bungalow

So online, I went to the website and used my coupon code and paid $3 handling for the caterpillar larvae. It was so cool to get them in the mail. We were looking at them real good an then Avery dropped them to the floor... Uh Oh I thought, they wouldn't make it!

Look how little they are

I took off the outer label and this is a few days later already

About 8 days old

It said they would cocoon at about 7-10 days. I think they all cocooned on the 9th or 10th day

Here is the first one in the middle of a cocoon

Once they all cocoon, then you open the lid, grab the paper disk they're attached to and move it and pin it to the bungalow inside. This was neat, but a little scary, what if I dropped them, what if one fell etc. It was a little nerve racking

After about 7 days in the cocoon they will hatch. Nature Pavilion guarantees a 66% hatch rate. So at least 2 of ours would hatch!

There was one lovely butterfly

That first one hatched on a Sunday night, The second one hatched in the middle of the night on Sunday/Monday and the third one hatched Monday morning, we caught this one hatching, but it's hard to make out.

The guy here ALL the way on the right, is the one that was hatching. His wings are limp because they're wet

Then I reached in there and grabbed the disk once they were all flying around

The empty cocoons

Now, you are supposed to let them go after a few days, but it is in the 50s here and I know they wouldn't survive. So we have decided to keep them in the house in their bungalow. Every 2 days I refresh their food, It's just sugar water on paper towel so they can suck it off there and we'll see how long they live. Their life span in the wild is 2-4 weeks and they never live more than 4, so we'll see. It's been almost 2 weeks now (Sunday/Monday will be 2)

So far they are doing good. We all enjoyed the process and Avery has as well. She thought it was interested how they could change so much and so did I. Watching how fast the larvae grew was insane. They grew so fast and so large. It was quite shocking. And then to think how they go from that to a butterfly with wings, legs, antennae etc. It is amazing!

I think they are beautiful too. I think the bottom of their wings is brown so they can blend into nature. But I love how beautiful the wings are once they open them. Gorgeous and orange.

I wondered what the red was once they hatched, but I read it's meconium poop. It looked like blood, it's all over the cage too, but it says you can just wipe it out and clean it that way.

The bottom is not waterproof like I thought it would be. The red leaked through to the counter and I placed paper towel under there, once every 4 days I change that out because it gets all wet from the paper towels. Their poop is now clear from the sugar water they're drinking.

Price: The Bungalow is $14.99. The first set of larvae is $3 handling, after that you can get replacements over and over again and they are $15 and you can buy them Here

Overall: ***** this was an awesome experience and I know we will do it again.